Fantastic, my friend @lgardner! Sounding repetitive, but, what I see in every post is pure perfection! Eagerly waiting for your progress!

Louis (@lgardner): Thanks for posting the RatoModeling site. I just took a look and there is a lot of good info. I am still amazed in how the Molotow looks after it is sprayed on. I was just reading an article on P-51s that was talking about how the flaps would droop after the hydraulic pressure would bleed off on the ground. Like you were saying, finding a nearby hobby shop has become a problem. I had lived in San Antonio for almost 30 years until last January. I remember there were 4 or 5 hobby stores for most of the time, but only 1 1/2 hobby stores when we left. So I move north of Austin. The nearest hobby store is an hour away, and the next nearest is almost 2 hours away. The nearest store sells mainly consignments, but usually has the paint and weathering products I need. The farther store is much more full-service, but you have to fight 2 hours of traffic (one way) to get there. Oh well. You do what you can to help the stores.

Spiros Pendedekas (@fiveten)
Thanks again for stopping by and commenting on these two Mustangs. Your Tamiya Corsair looks very nice, and I just left you a compliment over there. Please stay tuned as I have another update coming up next.

John vd Biggelaar (@johnb)
Thank you very much for the kind words. For me, the research is just as much fun as the building itself.

George R Blair Jr (@gblair)
Rato has a very good modeling website. He has spent countless hours on documenting a lot of things, especially colors that were used on P-40's, Corsairs and RAF aircraft. It's definitely worth digging around on his site. He has a great pictorial on how he models stressed / wrinkled aircraft sheet metal, the "oil can effect" I believe it was called. He has posted a Japanese aircraft where it had a bare metal finish, combined with the stressed skin on the exterior and it's absolutely stunning.

Yeah, you hit the nail on the head with the red dot. (I can't reproduce it) That blob is O.D. or RAF Green. More like some very faded O.D. next to the leading edge wing root. It may account for seeing that black diagonal line next to that O.D.. The angle of the shot may make that line or could they have painted in a declamation line/straight edge?
The starboard side of the a/c has black wing fillets. Note the breather tube just below the litter "A" has oil streaking down the fuselage some 3 or 4 ft.

Note the wings have the same paint arrangement as WR-P. There seems to be some gloss paint used to cover the invasion stripes on LOU IV.

I've come across another site that basically has done the same thing as what is being done here. However, that Blue paint may extend as far back to the horizontal stabs. Meeting where the vertical tail surfaces and the stabs come together.

2 attached images. Click to enlarge.

Stephen W Towle (@stephen-w-towle)
Good catch ! It's definitely not the same plane... I just took another look at the wing fillet scallops and I noticed the name was "LOU III" and not Lou 4 as you pointed out. I was so wrapped up at seeing the invasions stripes that I didn't even notice the different name. A classic case of not being able to see the forest for all of the trees... Tunnel vision at it's best and definitely my bad.

Your absolutely right about it being an earlier B or C model. The windscreen is different from what was used on the D model.

In one of the Dana Bell color pictures I posted earlier, it does indeed look as if the Dark Blue color does go on top of the fuselage, to the area just ahead of the horizontal stabilizer. It also appears as if the radio antennae is painted the same color Dark Blue.

I'm not 100 percent sure the Dark Blue is carried up as far on the vertical fin as depicted here. I think the Dark Blue might actually stop at the base, just ahead of the horizontal. I think the Dark Green picks up there, and continues on to cover the rest of the rudder and fin.

I will try enlarging this picture on my computer to see if I can pick it up better, to make a final determination. Please fell free to do the same if you don't mind. We can compare notes and come up with a good solution.

You are on a roll my friend. Please keep it up. This is how we get the most accurate version we can. As the old saying goes, there's no "I" in team work.

Thanks again.

Today I managed to get some work done on Cripes A Mighty. Here’s a few pictures of the progress. Please follow along and I’ll explain what is happening.

I used some pictures I personally took from various full scale Mustangs, showing how the brake lines were routed on the main landing gear struts. I made a brake line based on these photos and installed it on the strut. I used several wraps of bare metal foil to secure the "metal" portion of the brake line to the strut. This represents a hose clamp part that is used on the real plane for the same purpose.




Here are some of the Mustang landing gear photos I personally took over the past years.

The landing gear door braces were glued in position and painted appropriately.
The outer gear door was installed next.

Once the door mounting strut had dried sufficiently, I glued the outer door in place. One LG strut down, and one more to go.


I glued the completed landing gear assembly in place permanently. It’s looking good !


Next the ailerons were covered with foil and then glued in position too. Now the wing is complete and I’m almost happy with the way it’s looking now. As luck would have it, I managed to get a little bit of glue on the top side of the wing, just ahead of the aileron. I will have to carefully touch up the aluminum paint here.

Then I will really be happy, as long as I don't make things worse in the process.

The inner clam shell hydraulic cylinders were glued in place. Next I added the inner clam shell doors. These doors, along with the flaps would drop once the engine was shut down and the hydraulic pressure bled off.

Ironically on the earlier Allison powered Mustangs these doors didn’t drop after engine shut down. I don’t think that the flaps also dropped either, (once the engine was stopped), on the Allison Mustangs but I’m not 100 percent certain about that.

Finally I removed the liquid masking over the signaling lights.

I have to bend and install the brake line on the other side next.



This is what the Mustang looks like now.

It’s starting to look more like a Mustang every day.

As always comments are encouraged. Thanks for stopping by. I hope to have another installment tomorrow.

Good night.

Great work done on the landing gear, Louis @lgardner
The brake lines do look very realistic.
Nice way to let the struts dry sufficiently before applying the full weight on them.

Wow. Here we are at 300 postings for this build journal.
I wanted to share with you these pictures I had stored for a while on our home computer.

This is a picture of "LOU IV" before the majority of the nose was painted in Yellow. This is a great picture, because it shows how the colors on "LOU IV" changed / evolved over time.

Here we can see several things that are not the same in the last set of color photos that Dana Bell analyzed.

First off, if we look at the wing root, the color at this time appears to be a Darker Green. It's definitely not as dark as it is in the color pictures. It actually looks as if it might be a similar color as what we see on the anti glare panel just ahead of the cockpit. We know that color is a shade of Olive Drab as this is how these aircraft were delivered from the factory when new.

Going a little bit farther forward, and we can see the wing filet at the leading edge of the wing is still partially camouflaged, and not stripped of paint and / or polished, or possibly even replaced. The camouflage color on this panel is just barely visible over the top of the wing.

Going further back to the vertical fin, it looks as if the Dark Green color we see on the rudder and fin actually extends up to where the leading edge of the horizontal stabilizer is located. I am still not certain if this is a feature that we can see on the last incarnation of "LOU IV" in the color pictures. So the jury is still out on this color usage on the vertical fin.

It's also possible that more Dark Blue was applied to the fin at a later date.

I would like to hear your thoughts on this.

Lastly, we can see a slightly darker area that is visible on the side of the fuselage, just above the "2" and to the left side of the US insignia "Star and Bar". I think I have a plausible explanation for this.

This is likely due to accidentally spilling fuel on the fuselage during the refueling process. There is a fuel filler cap located here in this area, and it's used to fill the gas tank located behind the pilot's seat.

Here's another picture of the same aircraft "LOU IV". This time it's a few weeks later in the aircraft's service life. Here we can see how the nose has now been painted Yellow on the majority of the structure.

We can also see the wing fillet panel has been stripped of paint, or replaced with a part that is polished more, or simply has spent less time exposed to the elements and is therefore more shiny and looks fairly new.

Just behind this panel, we can now see how the wing root area now appears to have been painted using Black paint. It now closely matches the fuselage radio codes "E2*C".

Here again we can see the effects of more fuel spilled on the fuselage. Notice the darkness extends onto the US insignia "Star and Bar".

I believe this area was likely painted a Dark Blue, used to cover the upper portions of the D Day Invasion Stripes.

The wings were likely painted in the same manner, using a Dark Blue to cover the upper wing D Day Stripes.

Lastly, we can see how the wing mounted MG cover appears to be a lighter shade. I think this panel was replaced, using a new one or possibly cleaned up and polished. More about this in a few:

In another photo, you can see how the leading edge MG cover area under the wing is highly reflective. If you look a little bit closer we can see how the middle D Day stripe was not painted White. Instead it was left as is. I believe this was done because they likely had a drop tank fitted on the wing when these stripes were applied. It would have been hard to paint this portion of the wing if this was true.

The other plane in this picture "E2-S" is also painted in the same manner. It does not have it's center under wing stripe painted White either. You can also see something else is going on with the MG covers. Something in this photo looks to be painted Yellow by the wing mounted MG's.

Here is another picture of "E2*S". You can see how the wing mounted MG cover looks to be very similar to what we are seeing on "LOU IV".

Is it bare metal ? It kind of looks this way.

I have another possible hypothesis here.

It's possible this MG cover was replaced on "LOU IV" after the D Day Invasion Stripes were applied. At this time it was still natural unpainted metal. Then, as the D Day stripes were being painted over using what I believe was a Dark Blue color, the ground crew painted over the top side of the wing in an attempt to quickly cover the stripes. They also painted the top side of the MG cover at this time.

However, if we look back at the picture where we can see how the D Day stripes were still slightly visible after being painted over. This was likely because a very thin coat of Dark Blue was applied.

This would mean the top side of the MG cover was also thinly painted at this time.

I can't prove this, and it makes perfect sense for the how and why questions too.

It also seems to be logical. "Live long and prosper".